It turns out that long haul truckers have been retrofitting their diesel rigs with on-the-fly Hydrogen generators. The hydrogen is injected into the fuel system of the truck for significant gains in power, fuel economy and pollution reduction. Get the details here.

You gotta love mis-reporting. They're calling it a "Linux" worm but it's really just a remote PHP/CGI exploit that doesn't expose root.

Here's what slashdot has to say:

McAfee reports that a Linux worm has been found in the wild. The Linux/Lupper.worm is a derivative of the Linux/Slapper worm which also exists for BSD, just to be crossplatform. From the McAfee description: The
worm blindly attacks web servers by sending malicious http requests on
port 80. If the target server is running one of the vulnerable scripts
at specific URLs and is configured to permit external shell commands
and remote file download in the PHP/CGI environment, a copy of the worm
could be downloaded and executed."

"The New York Times reports that Google is striking fear into the hearts of even unrelated industries. From the article: 'We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board. In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Mr. Breyer, who is also a partner in a venture capital firm. The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby.'"

"The USPTO will issue the first storyline patent in history today, with two others following in the next few monts. Right to Create points out that this was anticipated several months ago in a story by Richard Stallman published in the The Guardian, UK. With the publication of this not-yet-granted patent, its author can begin requiring licensing fees for anyone whose activities might fall within its claims, including book authors, movie studies, television studios and broadcasters, etc. The claims appear to cover the literary elements of a story involving an ambitious high school student who applies for entrance to MIT and prays to remain sleeping until the acceptance letter comes, which doesn't happen for another 30 years."

It's a logical extension of the mess that is the US patent office.

It has to be a hoax.

However, if you can patent software and business methods, it's a logical extension that you should be able to patent a story.

If it's not a hoax this is probably a gift as any idiot can understand that a story should not be patentable. It's going to take something completely over the top to get the powers to be to understand just how bad software patents are.

Software is speech. What you are reading right now is software. It's called MOBIE and I wrote it.

"The Online Freedom of Speech Act was defeated in the House of Representatives yesterday. The Act would have immunized political bloggers from having to comply with hundreds of pages of FCC rules." From the article: "In
an acrimonious debate that broke largely along party lines, more than
three-quarters of congressional Democrats voted to oppose the reform
bill, which had enjoyed wide support from online activists and Web
commentators worried about having to comply with a tangled skein of
rules. The vote tally in the House of Representatives, 225 to 182, was
not enough to send the Online Freedom of Speech Act to the Senate.
Under the rules that House leaders adopted to accelerate the process, a
two-thirds supermajority was required."